Bricklayer is a black and white photograph taken by August Sander in 1928. It was included in his book Face of Our Time (1929), which depicts several professions and people from all the German society at the time of the Weimar Republic. It was also included in the list of the 100 most influential photographs ever taken by Time magazine. [1]
The photograph depicts a bricklayer from Cologne, in Germany, apparently on his working day, emerging from the darkness, with a severe expression and his head illuminated by the light, dressed on his casual work clothing and wearing a cap. One of his hands holds the platform where he carries on his shoulders a significant and seemingly heavy number of bricks, while the other hand rests on his hip. The man's head is framed by the cargo that he carries, and the lines of the bricks evoke those of his attire.
The photograph illustrates the strength and hard work of the profession of the bricklayer, while also demonstrating his dignity and a certain pride that he seems to have in it. [2]
A print of the photograph was sold by $749,000 at Sotheby's New York, on 11 December 2014. [3] [4]
There are prints of the photograph in several public collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, in New York, The Art Institute of Chicago, the Minneapolis Institute of Art, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. [5] [6] [2] [7]
Thomas Struth is a German photographer who is best known for his Museum Photographs series, black and white photographs of the streets of Düsseldorf and New York taken in the 1970s, and his family photographs series. Struth lives and works between Berlin and New York.
Richard Avedon was an American fashion and portrait photographer. He worked for Harper's Bazaar, Vogue and Elle specializing in capturing movement in still pictures of fashion, theater and dance. An obituary published in The New York Times said that "his fashion and portrait photographs helped define America's image of style, beauty and culture for the last half-century".
August Sander was a German portrait and documentary photographer. His first book Face of our Time was published in 1929. Sander has been described as "the most important German portrait photographer of the early twentieth century". Sander's work includes landscape, nature, architecture, and street photography, but he is best known for his portraits, as exemplified by his series People of the 20th Century. In this series, he aims to show a cross-section of society during the Weimar Republic.
Andreas Gursky is a German photographer and professor at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, Germany.
Alec Soth is an American photographer, based in Minneapolis. Soth makes "large-scale American projects" featuring the midwestern United States. New York Times art critic Hilarie M. Sheets wrote that he has made a "photographic career out of finding chemistry with strangers" and photographs "loners and dreamers". His work tends to focus on the "off-beat, hauntingly banal images of modern America" according to The Guardian art critic Hannah Booth. He is a member of Magnum Photos.
The Steerage is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1907. It has been hailed by some critics as one of the greatest photographs of all time because it captures in a single image both a formative document of its time and one of the first works of artistic modernism.
There were men and women and children on the lower deck of the steerage. There was a narrow stairway leading to the upper deck of the steerage, a small deck right on the bow with the steamer.
To the left was an inclining funnel and from the upper steerage deck there was fastened a gangway bridge that was glistening in its freshly painted state. It was rather long, white, and during the trip remained untouched by anyone.
On the upper deck, looking over the railing, there was a young man with a straw hat. The shape of the hat was round. He was watching the men and women and children on the lower steerage deck...A round straw hat, the funnel leaning left, the stairway leaning right, the white drawbridge with its railing made of circular chains – white suspenders crossing on the back of a man in the steerage below, round shapes of iron machinery, a mast cutting into the sky, making a triangular shape...I saw shapes related to each other. I was inspired by a picture of shapes and underlying that the feeling I had about life."
Pepper No. 30 is a black and white photograph and is one of the best-known photographs taken by Edward Weston. It depicts a solitary green pepper in rich black-and-white tones, with strong illumination from above.
Tetsuya Noda is a contemporary artist, printmaker and educator. He is widely considered to be Japan’s most important living print-artist, and one of the most successful contemporary print artists in the world. He is a professor emeritus of the Tokyo University of the Arts. Noda is most well-known for his visual autobiographical works done as a series of woodblock, print, and silkscreened diary entries that capture moments in daily life. His innovative method of printmaking involves photographs scanned through a mimeograph machine and then printed the images over the area previously printed by traditional woodblock print techniques onto the Japanese paper. Although this mixed-media technique is quite prosaic today, Noda was the first artist to initiate this breakthrough. Noda is the nephew of Hideo Noda an oil painter and muralist.
Barbara Crane was an American artist photographer born in Chicago, Illinois. Crane worked with a variety of materials including Polaroid, gelatin silver, and platinum prints among others. She was known for her experimental and innovative work that challenges the straight photograph by incorporating sequencing, layered negatives, and repeated frames. Naomi Rosenblum notes that Crane "pioneered the use of repetition to convey the mechanical character of much of contemporary life, even in its recreational aspects."
Winter, Fifth Avenue is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1893. The photograph was made at the corner of the Fifth Avenue and the 35th Street in New York. It was one of the first pictures that Stieglitz took using a more practical hand camera after his return from Europe.
Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare is a black and white photograph taken by French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson in Paris in 1932. The photograph has been printed at variable dimensions; the print donated by Cartier-Bresson to the Museum of Modern Art is listed at 35.2 × 24.1 cm. It is one of his best known and more critically acclaimed photographs and became iconic of his style that attempted to capture the decisive moment in photography. The photograph was considered one of the 100 most influential pictures of all time by Time magazine.
The Hand of Man is a black and white photograph taken by Alfred Stieglitz in 1902. This is one of the pictures he took concerning urban life and would be published in the first issue of his magazine Camera Work, in January 1903. A note on this issue stated that “The Hand of Man.. is an attempt to treat pictorially a subject which enters so much into our daily lives that we are apt to lose sight of the pictorial possibilities of the commonplace.”
Secretary at West German Radio, Cologne is a black and white photograph taken by August Sander in 1931. It was part of his project Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts, documenting the different social classes and occupations of the people of Germany.
Berlin Coal Carrier is a black and white photograph taken by August Sander in 1929. This picture was included in his book Face of Our Time (1931) and was part of his project People of the Twentieth Century, where he pictured several people and professions of Germany.
The Painter Otto Dix and His Wife, Martha is a black and white photograph taken by August Sander in 1925–1926. It was included in his photography book Face of Our Time (1931) and in his project People of the 20th Century, released posthumously.
Clearing Winter Storm, Yosemite National Park, California is a black and white photograph taken by Ansel Adams, c. 1937. It is part of a series of natural landscapes photographs that Adams took from Inspiration Point, at Yosemite Valley, since the 1930s.
The Family, Luzzara, Italy is a black and white photograph by Paul Strand, taken in 1953. It was made during a five-month stay in Luzzara, in the Po River Valley, north Italy, the birthplace of his friend, screenwriter Cesare Zavattini, which was documented in the book Un Paese (1955), illustrated with his photographs and Zavattini's text. Strand's group of photographs depicts the hardships and conditions of the rural Italy at the time and is directly related to the neorealism esthetic, of which Zavattini was an exponent in cinema.
The Pastry Cook, also known as The Pastry Chef, is a black and white photograph taken by German photographer August Sander, in 1928. It was included in his photography book Face of Our Time, published in 1929, and was part of his project People of the 20th Century. The current photograph became one of the most famous in his depictions of professions and characters of the Weimar Republic.
Working Students is a black and white photograph by German photographer August Sander, taken in 1926. The photograph depicts a group of four students, who also worked for a living, from the Weimar Republic. It was included in his photography landmark book Antlitz der Zeit (1929), and became one of the most famous pictures that Sander took back then.
The Painter Anton Räderscheidt is a black and white photograph taken by German photographer August Sander, in 1926. It depicts the painter Anton Räderscheidt, a member of the New Objectivity artist movement, in a street of Cologne. It was included in his book Face of Our Time (1929).